Steven Soderbergh’s State Of Cinema Talk

Here is the full transcript of director Steven Soderbergh‘s keynote at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival delivered Saturday. At first he requested the festival ensure no still photographs, audio, or video of his talk at the Kabuki Theater. But instead it was tweeted, blogged, recorded, and put online. Soderbergh promised in advance to “drop some grenades” and he opined about studio executives, indie filmmaking, and cinema vs movies. He did not detail his own retirement:

A few months ago I was on this Jet Blue flight from New York to Burbank. And I like Jet Blue, not just because of the prices. They have this terminal at JFK that I think is really nice. I think it might be the nicest terminal in the country although if you want to see some good airports you’ve got to go to a major city in another part of the world like Europe or Asia. They’re amazing airports. They’re incredible and quiet. You’re not being assaulted by all this music. I don’t know when it was decided we all need a soundtrack everywhere we go. I was just in the bathroom upstairs and there was a soundtrack accompanying me at the urinal, I don’t understand. So I’m getting comfortable in my seat. I spent the extra $60 to get the extra leg room so I’m trying to get comfortable and we make altitude. And there’s a guy on the other side of the aisle in front of me and he pulls out his iPad to start watching stuff. I’m curious to see what he’s going to watch – he’s a white guy in his mid-30s. And I begin to realize what he’s done is he’s loaded in half a dozen action sort of extravaganzas and he’s watching each of the action sequences – he’s skipping over all the dialogue and the narrative. This guy’s flight is going to be five and a half hours of just mayhem porn.

I get this wave of – not panic, it’s not like my heart started fluttering – but I had this sense of, am I going insane? Or is the world going insane – or both? Now I start with the circular thinking again. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s generational and I’m getting old, I’m in the back nine professionally. And maybe my 22-year-old daughter doesn’t feel this way at all. I should ask her. But then I think, no: Something is going on – something that can be measured is happening, and there has to be. When people are more outraged by the ambiguous ending of The Sopranos than some young girl being stoned to death, then there’s something wrong. We have people walking around who think the government stages these terrorist attacks. And anybody with a brain bigger than a walnut knows that our government is not nearly competent enough to stage a terrorist attack and then keep it a secret because, as we know, in this day and age you cannot keep a secret.

So I think that life is sort of like a drumbeat. It has a rhythm and sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it’s slower, and maybe what’s happening is this drumbeat is just accelerating and it’s gotten to the point where I can’t hear between the beats anymore and it’s just a hum. Again, I thought maybe that’s my generation, every generation feels that way, maybe I should ask my daughter. But then I remember somebody did this experiment where if you’re in a car and you’re going more than 20 miles an hour it becomes impossible to distinguish individual features on a human being’s face. I thought that’s another good analogy for this sensation. It’s a very weird experiment for someone to come up with.

So that was my Jet Blue flight. But the circular thinking didn’t really stop and I got my hands on a book by a guy named Douglas Rushkoff and I realized I’m suffering from something called Present Shock which is the name of his book. This quote made me feel a little less insane: “When there’s no linear tie, how is a person supposed to figure out what’s going on? There’s no story, no narrative to explain why things are the way things are. Previously distinct causes and effects collapse into one another. There’s no time between doing something and seeing the result. Instead the results begin accumulating and influencing us before we’ve even completed an action. And there’s so much information coming in at once from so many different sources that there’s simply no way to trace the plot over time”. That’s the hum I’m talking about. And I mention this because I think it’s having an effect on all of us. I think it’s having an effect on our culture, and I think it’s having an effect on movies. How they’re made, how they’re sold, how they perform.

But before we talk about movies we should talk about art in general, if that’s possible. Given all the incredible suffering in the world I wonder, what is art for, really? If the collected works of Shakespeare can’t prevent genocide then really, what is it for? Shouldn’t we be spending the time and resources alleviating suffering and helping other people instead of going to the movies and plays and art installations? When we did Ocean’s Thirteen the casino set used $60,000 of electricity every week. How do you justify that? Do you justify that by saying, the people who could’ve had that electricity are going to watch the movie for two hours and be entertained – except they probably can’t, because they don’t have any electricity, because we used it. Then I think, what about all the resources spent on all the pieces of entertainment? What about the carbon footprint of getting me here? Then I think, why are you even thinking that way and worrying about how many miles per gallon my car gets, when we have NASCAR, and monster truck pulls on TV? So what I finally decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it’s because we are a species that’s driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that’s impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being – literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you’re experiencing that piece of art, you’re not alone. You’re connected to the arts. So I feel like that can’t be too bad.

Art is also about problem solving, and it’s obvious from the news, we have a little bit of a problem with problem solving. In my experience, the main obstacle to problem solving is an entrenched ideology. The great thing about making a movie or a piece of art is that that never comes into play. All the ideas are on the table. All the ideas and everything is open for discussion, and it turns out everybody succeeds by submitting to what the thing needs to be. Art, in my view, is a very elegant problem-solving model.

Now we finally arrive at the subject of this rant, which is the state of cinema. First of all, is there a difference between cinema and movies? Yeah. If I were on Team America, I’d say Fuck yeah! The simplest way that I can describe it is that a movie is something you see, and cinema is something that’s made. It has nothing to do with the captured medium, it doesn’t have anything to do with where the screen is, if it’s in your bedroom, your iPad, it doesn’t even really have to be a movie. It could be a commercial, it could be something on YouTube. Cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s an approach in which everything matters. It’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a signature or a fingerprint. It isn’t made by a committee, and it isn’t made by a company, and it isn’t made by the audience. It means that if this filmmaker didn’t do it, it either wouldn’t exist at all, or it wouldn’t exist in anything like this form.

So, that means you can take a perfectly solid, successful and acclaimed movie and it may not qualify as cinema. It also means you can take a piece of cinema and it may not qualify as a movie, and it may actually be an unwatchable piece of shit. But as long as you have filmmakers out there who have that specific point of view, then cinema is never going to disappear completely. Because it’s not about money, it’s about good ideas followed up by a well-developed aesthetic. I love all this new technology, it’s great. It’s smaller, lighter, faster. You can make a really good-looking movie for not a lot of money, and when people start to get weepy about celluloid, I think of this quote by Orson Welles when somebody was talking to him about new technology, which he tended to embrace, and he said, “I don’t want to wait on the tool, I want the tool to wait for me”, which I thought was a good way to put it. But the problem is that cinema as I define it, and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience. The reasons for this, in my opinion, are more economic than philosophical, but when you add an ample amount of fear and a lack of vision, and a lack of leadership, you’ve got a trajectory that I think is pretty difficult to reverse.

Now, of course, it’s very subjective; there are going to be exceptions to everything I’m going to say, and I’m just saying that so no one thinks I’m talking about them. I want to be clear: The idea of cinema as I’m defining it is not on the radar in the studios. This is not a conversation anybody’s having; it’s not a word you would ever want to use in a meeting. Speaking of meetings, the meetings have gotten pretty weird. There are fewer and fewer executives who are in the business because they love movies. There are fewer and fewer executives that know movies. So it can become a very strange situation. I mean, I know how to drive a car, but I wouldn’t presume to sit in a meeting with an engineer and tell him how to build one, and that’s kind of what you feel like when you’re in these meetings. You’ve got people who don’t know movies and don’t watch movies for pleasure deciding what movie you’re going to be allowed to make. That’s one reason studio movies aren’t better than they are, and that’s one reason that cinema, as I’m defining it, is shrinking.

Well, how does a studio decide what movies get made? One thing they take into consideration is the foreign market, obviously. It’s become very big. So that means, you know, things that travel best are going to be action-adventure, science fiction, fantasy, spectacle, some animation thrown in there. Obviously the bigger the budget, the more people this thing is going to have to appeal to, the more homogenized it’s got to be, the more simplified it’s got to be. So things like cultural specificity and narrative complexity, and, god forbid, ambiguity, those become real obstacles to the success of the film here and abroad.

Speaking of ambiguity, we had a test screening of Contagion once and a guy in the focus group stood up and he said, “I really hate the Jude Law character. I don’t know if he’s a hero or an asshole”. And I thought well, here we go. There’s another thing, a process known as running the numbers, and for a filmmaker this is kind of the equivalent of a doctor showing you a chest x-ray and saying there’s a shadow on it. It’s a kind of fungible algorithm that’s used when they want say no without, really, saying no. I could tell you a really good story of how I got pushed off a movie because of the way the numbers ran, but if I did, I’d probably get shot in the street, and I really like my cats.

So then there’s the expense of putting a movie out, which is a big problem. Point of entry for a mainstream, wide-release movie: $30 million. That’s where you start. Now you add another 30 for overseas. Now you’ve got to remember, the exhibitors pay half of the gross, so to make that 60 back you need to gross 120. So you don’t even know what your movie is yet, and you’re already looking at 120. That ended up being part of the reason why the Liberace movie didn’t happen at a studio. We only needed $5 million from a domestic partner, but when you add the cost of putting a movie out, now you’ve got to gross $75 million to get that 35 back, and the feeling amongst the studios was that this material was too “special” to gross $70 million. So the obstacle here isn’t just that special subject matter, but that nobody has figured out how to reduce the cost of putting a movie out. There have been some attempts to analyze it, but one of the mysteries is that this analysis doesn’t really reveal any kind of linear predictive behavior, it’s still mysterious the process whereby people decide if they’re either going to go to a movie or not go to a movie. Sometimes you don’t even know how you reach them. Like on Magic Mike for instance, the movie opened to $38 million, and the tracking said we were going to open to 19. So the tracking was 100% wrong. It’s really nice when the surprise goes in that direction, but it’s hard not to sit there and go how did we miss that? If this is our tracking, how do you miss by that much?

I know one person who works in marketing at a studio suggested, on a modestly budgeted film that had some sort of brand identity and some A-list talent attached, she suggested, “Look, why don’t we not do any tracking at all, and just spend 15 and we’ll just put it out”. They wouldn’t do it. They were afraid it would fail, when they fail doing the other thing all the time. Maybe they were afraid it was going to work. The other thing that mystifies me is that you would think, in terms of spending, if you have one of these big franchise sequels that you would say oh, we don’t have to spend as much money because is there anyone in the galaxy that doesn’t know Iron Man’s opening on Friday? So you would think, oh, we can stop carpet-bombing with TV commercials. It’s exactly the opposite. They spend more. They spend more. Their attitude is: You know, it’s a sequel, and it’s the third one, and we really want to make sure people really want to go. We want to make sure that opening night number is big so there’s the perception of the movie is that it’s a huge success. There’s that, and if you’ve ever wondered why every poster and every trailer and every TV spot looks exactly the same, it’s because of testing. It’s because anything interesting scores poorly and gets kicked out. Now I’ve tried to argue that the methodology of this testing doesn’t work. If you take a poster or a trailer and you show it to somebody in isolation, that’s not really an accurate reflection of whether it’s working because we don’t see them in isolation, we see them in groups. We see a trailer in the middle of five other trailers, we see a poster in the middle of eight other posters, and I’ve tried to argue that maybe the thing that’s making it distinctive and score poorly actually would stick out if you presented it to these people the way the real world presents it. And I’ve never won that argument.

You know, we had a trailer for Side Effects that we did in London and the filmmaking team really, really liked it. But the problem was that it was not testing well, and it was really not testing as well as this domestic trailer that we had. The point spread was so significant that I really couldn’t justify trying to jam this thing down distributor’s throats, so we had to abandon it. Now look, not all testing is bad. Sometimes you have to, especially on a comedy. There’s nothing like 400 people who are not your friends to tell you when something’s wrong. I just don’t think you can use it as the last word on a movie’s playability, or its quality. Magic Mike tested poorly. Really poorly. And fortunately Warner Brothers just ignored the test scores, and stuck with their plan to open the movie wide during the summer.

But let’s go back to Side Effects for a second. This is a movie that didn’t perform as well as any of us wanted it to. So, why? What happened? It can’t be the campaign because all the materials that we had, the trailers, the posters, the TV spots, all that stuff tested well above average. February 8th, maybe it was the date, was that a bad day? As it turns out that was the Friday after the Oscar nominations are announced, and this year there was an atypically large bump to all the films that got nominated, so that was a factor. Then there was a storm in the Northeast, which is sort of our core audience. Nemo came in, so God, obviously, is getting me back for my comments about monotheism. Was it the concept? There was a very active decision early on to sell the movie as kind of a pure thriller and kind of disconnect it from this larger social issue of everybody taking pills. Did that make the movie seem more commercial, or did it make it seem more generic? We don’t know. What about the cast? Four attractive white people… this is usually not an obstacle. The exit polls were very good, the reviews were good. How do we figure out what went wrong? The answer is: We don’t. Because everybody’s already moved on to the next movie they have to release.

Now, I’m going to attempt to show how a certain kind of rodent might be smarter than a studio when it comes to picking projects. If you give a certain kind of rodent the option of hitting two buttons, and one of the buttons, when you touch it, dispenses food 40% of the time, and one of the buttons when you touch it dispenses food 60% percent of the time, this certain kind of rodent very quickly figures out never to touch the 40% button ever again. So when a studio is attempting to determine on a project-by-project basis what will work, instead of backing a talented filmmaker over the long haul, they’re actually increasing their chances of choosing wrong. Because in my view, in this business which is totally talent-driven, it’s about horses, not races. I think if I were going to run a studio I’d just be gathering the best filmmakers I could find and sort of let them do their thing within certain economic parameters. So I would call Shane Carruth, or Barry Jenkins or Amy Seimetz and I’d bring them in and go, ok, what do you want to do? What are the things you’re interested in doing? What do we have here that you might be interested in doing? If there was some sort of point of intersection I’d go: Ok, look, I’m going to let you make three movies over five years, I’m going to give you this much money in production costs, I’m going to dedicate this much money on marketing. You can sort of proportion it how you want, you can spend it all on one and none on the other two, but go make something.

Now, that only works if you are very, very good at identifying talent. Real talent, the kind of talent that sustains. And you can’t be judging strictly on commercial performance, or hype, or hipness, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect someone running a multi-billion dollar business to be able to identify talent. I get it, it’s the studio, you need all kinds of movies. You need comedies, you need horror films, you need action films, you need animated films, I get it. But the point is, can’t some of these be cinema also? This is kind of what we tried to do with Section 8 is we tried to bring interesting filmmakers into the studio system and protect them. But unfortunately the only way a studio is going to allow that kind of freedom to a young filmmaker is if the budgets are low. And unfortunately the most profitable movies for the studios are going to be the big movies, the home runs. They don’t look at the singles or the doubles as being worth the money or the man hours. Psychologically, it’s more comforting to spend $60 million promoting a movie that costs 100, than it does to spend $60 million for a movie that costs 10. I know what you’re thinking: If it costs 10 you’re going to be in profit sooner. Maybe not. Here’s why: OK. $10 million movie, 60 million to promote it, that’s 70, so you’ve got to gross 140 to get out. Now you’ve got $100 million movie, you’re going spend 60 to promote it. You’ve got to get 320 to get out. How many $10 million movies make 140 million dollars? Not many. How many $100 million movies make 320? A pretty good number, and there’s this sort of domino effect that happens too. Bigger home video sales, bigger TV sales, so you can see the forces that are sort of draining in one direction in the business. So, here’s a thought… maybe nothing’s wrong. Maybe I’m a clown. Maybe the audiences are happy, and the studio is happy, and look at this from Variety:

“Shrinking release slates that focus on tentpoles and the emergence of a new normal in the home vid market has allowed the largest media congloms to boost the financial performance of their movie divisions, according to Nomura Equity research analyst Michael Nathanson”.

So, according to Mr. Nathanson, the studios are successfully cutting costs, the decline in home videos have plateaued, and the international box office, which used to be 50% of revenue is now 70%. With one exception in that all the stock prices of all the companies that own these studios are up. It would appear that all these companies are flush. So maybe nothing’s wrong, and I’ve got to tell you, this is the only arena in history in which trickle-down economics actually works, because when a studio is flush, they spend more money to make more money, because their stock price is all about market share. And you know, there’s no other business that’s this big, that’s actually this financially transparent. You have a situation here in which there is an objective economic value given to an asset. It’s not like that derivatives mortgage bullshit that just brought the world to its knees, you can’t say a movie made more money than it actually made, and internally, you can’t say that you didn’t spend what you spent on it. It’s contractual that you have to make these numbers available.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of waste. I think there are too many layers of executives, I don’t know why you should be having a lot of phone calls with people that can’t actually make decisions. They’ll violate their own rules on a whim, while they make you adhere to them. They get simple things wrong sometimes, like remakes. I mean, why are you always remaking the famous movies? Why aren’t you looking back into your catalog and finding some sort of programmer that was made 50 years ago that has a really good idea in it, that if you put some fresh talent on it, it could be really great. Of course, in order to do that you need to have someone at the studio that actually knows those movies. Even if you don’t have that person you could hire one. The sort of executive ecosystem is distorted, because executives don’t get punished for making bombs the way that filmmakers do, and the result is there’s no turnover of new ideas, there’s no new ideas about how to approach the business or how to deal with talent or material. But, again, economically, it’s a pretty straightforward business. Hell, it’s the third-biggest export that we have. It’s one of the few things that we do that the world actually likes.

I’ve stopped being embarrassed about being in the film business, I really have. I’m not spending my days trying to make a weapon that kills people more efficiently. It’s an interesting business. But again, taking the 30,000 foot view, maybe nothing’s wrong, and maybe my feeling that the studios are kind of like Detroit before the bailout is totally insupportable. I mean, I’m wrong a lot. I’m wrong so much, it doesn’t even raise my blood pressure anymore. Maybe everything is just fine. But… Admissions, this is the number of bodies that go through the turnstile, ten years ago: 1.52 billion. Last year: 1.36 billion. That’s a ten and a half percent drop. Why are admissions dropping? Nobody knows, not even Nate Silver. Probably a combination of things: Ticket prices, maybe, a lot of competition for eyeballs. There’s a lot of good TV out there. Theft is a big problem. I know this is a really controversial subject, but for people who think everything on the internet should just be totally free all I can say is, good luck. When you try to have a life and raise a family living off something you create…

There’s a great quote from Steve Jobs:

“From the earliest days of Apple I realized that we thrived when we created intellectual property. If people copied or stole our software we’d be out of business. If it weren’t protected there’d be no incentive for us to make new software or product designs. If protection of intellectual property begins to disappear creative companies will disappear or never get started. But there’s a simpler reason: It’s wrong to steal. It hurts other people, and it hurts your own character”.

I agree with him. I think that what people go to the movies for has changed since 9/11. I still think the country is in some form of PTSD about that event, and that we haven’t really healed in any sort of complete way, and that people are, as a result, looking more toward escapist entertainment. And look, I get it. There’s a very good argument to be made that only somebody who has it really good would want to make a movie that makes you feel really bad. People are working longer hours for less money these days, and maybe when they get in a movie, they want a break. I get it.

But let’s sex this up with some more numbers. In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.

When I was coming up, making an independent film and trying to reach an audience I thought was like, trying to hit a thrown baseball. This is like trying to hit a thrown baseball – but with another thrown baseball. That’s why I’m spending so much time talking to you about the business and the money, because this is the force that is pushing cinema out of mainstream movies. I’ve been in meetings where I can feel it slipping away, where I can feel that the ideas I’m tossing out, they’re too scary or too weird, and I can feel the thing. I can tell: It’s not going to happen, I’m not going to be able to convince them to do this the way I think it should be done. I want to jump up on the table and scream, “Do you know how lucky we are to be doing this? Do you understand that the only way to repay that karmic debt is to make something good, is to make something ambitious, something beautiful, something memorable?” But I didn’t do that. I just sat there, and I smiled.

Maybe the ideas I had don’t work, and the only way they’ll find out is that someone’s got to give me half a billion dollars, to see if it’ll work. That seems like a lot of money, but actually in point of fact there are a couple movies coming down the pike that represent, in terms of their budgets and their marketing campaigns, individually, a half a billion dollars. Just one movie. Just give me one of these big movies. No? Kickstarter!

I don’t want to bring this to a conclusion on a down note. A few years back, I got a call from an agent and he said, “Will you come see this film? It’s a small, independent film a client made. It’s been making the festival circuit and it’s getting a really good response but no distributor will pick it up, and I really want you to take a look at it and tell me what you think.” The film was called Memento. So the lights come up and I think, It’s over. It’s over. Nobody will buy this film? This is just insane. The movie business is over. It was really upsetting. Well fortunately, the people who financed the movie loved the movie so much that they formed their own distribution company and put the movie out and made $25 million. So whenever I despair I think, OK, somebody out there somewhere, while we’re sitting right here, somebody out there somewhere is making something cool that we’re going to love, and that keeps me going. The other thing I tell young filmmakers is when you get going and you try to get money, when you’re going into one of those rooms to try and convince somebody to make it, I don’t care who you’re pitching, I don’t care what you’re pitching – it can be about genocide, it can be about child killers, it can be about the worst kind of criminal injustice that you can imagine – but as you’re sort of in the process of telling this story, stop yourself in the middle of a sentence and act like you’re having an epiphany, and say: You know what, at the end of this day, this is a movie about hope.

141 Comments

Robert Chandler • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Superb. Thank you for printing this in full. Movies about people, that’s all we really want. What else can there be? And yet increasingly movies are funded and produced that aren’t about people at all. In my view: if you want to make a movie and it isn’t about people then you haven’t earned the right yet to make a movie.

Thomas Earlham • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I’ve often thought that a movie with no people in it could be fascinating, depending on the concept and the depth of craft and of insight. It would take a genius to make it right, to be sure. However, I haven’t been able to come with an example of one, outside a few experimental films.

Which brings to me to my question: what films have you seen, Robert Chandler, that we have a problem with movies that are not about people? It seems to me that 100% of commercially released films are about people.

Brad • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

A silly rebuttal, Thomas. Obviously Robert is referring figuratively to films that service their narrative to special effects and familiar archetypes over films that actually service their narrative to realistic, believable characters (it’s not the first time such a comment has been made). Don’t jack off your ego on word play when you really have nothing intelligent to contribute.

Thomas Earlham • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Perhaps I was being hyperbolic, but it was to a purpose.

Star Wars (which I hate) was about people. Babe (which I love, but was populated almost entirely by digital farm animals) was about people. Saw is about people. Garden variety porn is about people. The human experience can be expressed through genre; through special effects, image, text, and music; through narrative and non-narrative alike, and through pure performance.

The gist of Robert’s post seemed to be that unless you’re making (heavy intonation here:) serious drama or comedies that decorate the serious drama with laughter (preferably through the tears) then you’re not making a film about people. Which is horseshit. I’ll say it again: all films are essentially about people. What we ought to be demanding are excellent films, regardless of the experiences their characters undergo, or the tools their makers employ.

I didn’t even address his closing absurdity–“…if you want to make a movie and it isn’t about people then you haven’t earned the right yet to make a movie.” The people who’ve earned the right to make a movie are the ones who picked up a camera and made a fucking movie.

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Thanks, Brad.

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I also thank Brad.

Steven • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I would also like to thank Bradley

Robb • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Alrighty now Brad, that’s three times now you’ve thanked yourself. You fucking dork.

Yikes Brad…on top of that lamest of internet transgressions–anonymous “support” of one’s own input–I see you’ve evoked the dreaded “masturbation as clumsy metaphor for self-aggrandizement” as well. Diagnosis: fucking dork

Zach • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Saying “movies about people” may be an inapt choice of phrase, but I think a lot of us know what he’s talking about here.

Things like porn and Saw may be constructed around subjects, but they were made to provoke predictable (and therefore lucrative) neurological responses in their audiences, not to evoke anything of the spirit of humanity, or to appeal to that part of us that wants to give the best of ourselves to one another or to grow.

To me, this is what good art does, including cinema. It makes us more empathic, gives us a wider perspective on each other, and helps us reconcile ourselves to the sheer physics of life and nature with all its degradations and banalities.

When Soderbergh mentions people like Carruth and Seimetz, these are filmmakers who are exploring more thoughtful themes like identity and history, not just hacks trying to inspire dread or lust. Soderbergh’s point is that executives aren’t as interested in thoughtful themes as they once were. Even Brad’s critics must concede that’s probably right.

Mexican Blade Runner • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Milo and Otis

livex • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

2001 isn’t about people — though it is about humanity as a whole, which isn’t the same thing. The only developed character in that film is HAL the computer, and HAL is really a stand-in for Technology — the film is really a story about the relation between two characters, Humanity and Technology.

Anyone of couse has the right to make a movie about what they want to make it about. You must be indeed a blinkered, young ( probably educated but lacking broad taste) , naive young man if all you want to see is movies about people but I want to also see movies about peolpe, animals, dinosaurs, ghosts, aliens…zombies and anything else really. Too sweeping a statement to make ?maybe, but seriously you only want films about people?
Each to their own.

Michael • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

This bitchfest was delivered by someone who just profited enormously by selling an incredibly cliched, mediocre (6.1 on IMDB) film to the public on the basis of watching attractive men take off their clothes.

Henry • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Michael you are a sad fool. This is probably the most important speech about the state of the film business that has been given in ten years. I guarantee you that our most important young filmmakers will look back on this in twenty years as a huge point of influence.

Michael • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I’m a sad fool? All Soderbergh did was reiterate every sour grape every filmmaker has had since the Paramount decrees. “Waaaa, waaaa, this industry is too commercial, people don’t want to give me millions of dollars to do what I want to do on the grounds that I am so f*cking special.” Breaking news: you work in show BUSINESS, not show ART. I love how he gives the standard, “Well if I ran a studio, we would trust that talent to do whatever they want,” as if that has never happened before with DISASTROUS results (United Artists, Orion, Sony under Peter Guber). And as proof of his originality and his genius, he offers up as an example “Magic Mike”, as if people saw it and loved it because of the strength of its story and characters, and not because they wanted to see celebrities’ asses.

Michael might be a weasel and he may not have made any artsy-fartsy Hollywood films but that doesn’t make him wrong.

WT • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

It’s one thing if Michael thinks Soderbergh is a bad filmmaker all around (I disagree), but his actual point of Soderbergh’s somewhat hypocritical rant is another. There are tons of holes in the filmmaker’s arguments, not to mention that most of his examples are anecdotal or manipulative (i.e. Magic Mike’s success being its character & story…yeah okay).

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

you go boy!

sean • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

“And as proof of his originality and his genius, he offers up as an example “Magic Mike””

Can you point to what specific quote you’re looking at? The reason I ask is, the only two times I see him mention “Magic Mike”, he is saying “I don’t know why this movie was as big a hit as it was” and “nobody is sure why this movie was as big a hit as it was.” Neither of those seem to be saying anything in any direction about Soderbergh’s originality or genius. So it really seems, based just on the facts and your response to them, like you’re talking completely out of your ass.

JB Hogan • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

He isn’t using Magic Mike as an example of “genius.” It’s clear he’s talking about how inaccurate tracking and prediction models can be, and how poor test scores don’t mean poor box office. He never claims Magic Mike was about artistic vision or a tour de force of talent, it used it as an example to show that the conventional wisdom isn’t always accurate. It’s quality isn’t high, but that’s not the topic of discourse, either.

suf • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Is this a joke? The guy makes self-indulgent films, MAGIC MIKE was completely empty, had zero good lines and the worst acting performance in the history of modern filmmaking. That was his one broad movie, and I don’t even like broad movies. This speech was poorly written. I appreciate the message, but the guy needs his ego popped. Does he really think that America will ever care about his output once he’s gone? No one talks about this guy. I wish he would go away and take his ball with him.

Andy D • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Virgin alert. Virgin alert. Virgin alert.

Adam • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Both you fools are sad. Make out on a bed of roses or something

Vin • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

This is why I come here. The bitterness of some of the commenters is so wretched, it’s mind blowing to behold.

An excellent speech by an excellent American artist. Thanks for printing it, Deadline.

mike • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Yeah, this is extremely important. I am a young filmmaker right now and i completely agree with everything he said. This is an art form. Michael I do not want your money and I don’t want you in my cinema.

Turdboy • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

He also made Out of Sight, Erin Brokovich, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven and The Informant. Furthermore, he’s someone who is willing to try different genres, experiment and take risks. So what if some of his movies are mediocre. He is still someone with valuable insight to share.

Jose Frederick • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Powerful, direct and pungent. I believe Steven provides an accurate view of the Studio view. Pitty he does not know his history when citing France as the oldest place with cave paintings when it was in Spain, Cantabria, 10,000 years earlier, but other than that “slight” error which will go unnoticed by the greater public, he is ok….
:-)

brian fantana • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Jose – your history book is outdated – go see Werner Herzog’s CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS – the cave paintings in France make the ones in Spain look like modern art

and bravo to Steven for nailing it once again – easily the most influential filmmaker of his generation

so • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Really? Soderberg’s career has been a complete disappointment to everyone but him. His movies are cold and have zero heart. His ego is also way out of control. I agree with so much of what he’s sad, but it has all been said before, and has been said much, much better.

Jordan Mangini • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Just look at these names: Michael (no last name), So (not even a name), Anonymous, Anonymous. Is it actually satisfying to troll Deadline all day and pound out this bile from your desk in a desperate cry of frustration? You can say whatever you want, but Soderbergh has never been anonymous. He has been brave. He has taken chances. After Chris Nolan made memento he made comic book movies. After Soderbergh made Erin Brockovich (and won an OSCAR for Traffic) he made the Informant, and Girl Friend Experience, and Bubble. On NO MONEY, and with complete disregard for what the snarkeratti might say about him. Do we need more of that? Or do we need more people on Deadline parsing the weekend grosses and speculating on what’s right or wrong in someone else’s career.
Michael, So, Anonymous, Anonymous–go make a movie. It’s not hard and it’s not expensive. Go rent a Canon 5D and download final cut. I don’t say that with any animus or anger–I mean it generously. You will be happier. And you will be occasionally scared. And people will criticize you. And some people will like you. But you will make the world a better place by putting yourself out there and saying this is my voice, this is my vision–what’s yours? That’s HIS point. And it will be so much more satisfying than sniping back and forth on Deadline from the false safety or your local Starbucks or darkened room. Instead of carping at Soderbergh we should be grateful that he took all the chances he did and we should be sad that now, it seems, he has stopped making films.

John • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

>>But you will make the world a better place by putting yourself out there and saying this is my voice, this is my vision–what’s yours?

You serious? I’m sick of your type — narcissist film makers who think their art somehow saves the world; that somehow making a movie and “finding your voice” (like wtf does that mean?) is somehow a noble cause.

Is this essay an essay about the oldest cave paintings ever? He actually doesn’t claim the the paintings in France are the oldest. This is an essay about art and the business thereof. Perhaps you, Mr. Cave Painting Scholar, should go write an essay about the ones in Spain.

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Wow… I have been promoted to Cave Painting scholar! Amo print this and put it behind my leather office chair to show off honorary titles given by real connoisseurs! Dude, focus on the real speech of Steven which is where the beef is and don’t get distracted! Have a nice day and don’t hit the postman on your way out…

Seth • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Not impressed. Nothing particularly original in this talk or innovative.

my understanding is that he’s done with directing. Maybe he’ll continue making movies in sense of writing oder producing. Someone like him – who obviously cares about the art of film – can’t help but continue being creative one way or the other.

pretentious • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Steven makes some great points but he’s dead wrong that people aren’t already talking about them. Fans of cinema have been talking for many, many years about the blockbuster effect that began with Spielberg and Lucas et al. So what’s new here? It’s a business and the executives only care about making money…well that’s not new.

Art is art and business is business. And the ‘movie’ as an art form is in great decline, it has been for decades, and it is slowly being replaced by serial television.

Brad • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

35 years of people poorly imitating what Lucas and Spielberg did doesn’t make Lucas and Spielberg responsible. Have always hated this argument.

Hobbled • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Pretentious didn’t say that Lucas and Spielberg were responsible. All he said was that the blockbuster effect began with them. He didn’t ascribe blame to anyone in particular.

Movie lover • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Soderbergh, in his intelligent and passionate speech, does not talk about the blockbuster effect of the 70´s, he´s talking about the seismic shift of production costs which influences the choice of which movies got made during the last decade. And this already affects the way people choosing their kind of entertainment.

If people at some point stop being interested in stories and start to only watch the action sequences or trailer “moments”, then the artform will be at dead end. Then “Transformers” actually will have lived up to its title.

sean • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I don’t think you’re going to see Steven Soderbergh citing ‘Jaws’ as anything but a stone-cold masterpiece. He’s certainly not going to point to it as the beginning of the downfall, because he’s not a person who views “money” and “art” as independent. [And no wonder, give that he has crossed both fairly successfully.] ‘Jaws’ is “cinema” in the way he is defining it, and in exactly the way that most Hollywood stuff now isn’t.

brian fantana • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Jose I stand corrected – apologies

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

No worries, truth of the matter is that the speech is very good and will give much to talk about. We can leave caves for another day!

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Accepted, I was just lucky I knew a bit about those caves since I did visit them.

Ray • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I remember watching the academy awards a long time ago and Soderbergh won for something. I don’t remember what, I don’t remember who won anything else or anything about those awards except for this: he didn’t thank a bunch of people, instead he gave an amazing brief speech about doing something creative for just a little while each day and how it could change the world. He is the embodiment of the artistic ethic and I commend him.

GuyX • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I remember that speech. It was in 2001 for the academy awards. He won best director for Traffic over Ridley Scott for Gladiator. That speech made me want to make movies for a living.

ksb36 • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I can’t figure out why this irritates me so much.

Maybe it’s because of this retirement nonsense–at 50! Steve, I’m sure you’ve made a lot of dough in this industry you’re clearly fed up with, but out here in the real world, that’s mid career. So you don’t want to do it anymore. Okay, then get out of the way and let other people have their chance.

Maybe it’s because movies have ALWAYS been hard to make. There’s nothing new about that. Creative types have always battled with the bean counters. What’s new about any of this? It’s the movie BUSINESS, not the movie CREATIVENESS. In fact, there are many more outlets available to independent filmmakers than ever before, iTunes, VOD, etc. The entire way people consume media has changed. It’s the new reality, there’s no going back from here.

Lastly, this reads to me as if it’s from someone who’s frustrated that audiences don’t want to see what you want them to see. For most people, movies are an escape from the hum drum routine of our lives. Most of us work 40+ hours a week and have kids and many other responsibilities. So, we want to see escapist material. I’m just as guilty as anyone. But I truly believe that cream rises to the top. Good films tend to find an audience, more often than not. And it were ever thus.

Enjoy your retirement.

sean • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Given that only a person with zero interest in film could make the generalized statements that you are making, I’m really curious why you would bother posting on a site devoted to film. Especially given that you work 40+ hours a week and have children *and* “many other” responsibilities. Why would you bother posting a comment about something which you clearly don’t know anything about and haven’t thought at all about the article that was posted before responding?

This is a serious question.

Quinn • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Lastly, this reads to me as if it’s from someone who’s frustrated that audiences don’t want to see what you want them to see. For most people, movies are an escape from the hum drum routine of our lives. Most of us work 40+ hours a week and have kids and many other responsibilities. So, we want to see escapist material.

No, he is frustrated that audiences are not being given the option. And he actually did address the fact that yes, people do want escapism:And look, I get it. There’s a very good argument to be made that only somebody who has it really good would want to make a movie that makes you feel really bad. People are working longer hours for less money these days, and maybe when they get in a movie, they want a break. I get it.

As well as recognizing that perhaps his argument is “insupportable”:But again, taking the 30,000 foot view, maybe nothing’s wrong, and maybe my feeling that the studios are kind of like Detroit before the bailout is totally insupportable. I mean, I’m wrong a lot.

I was actually there that day and his arguments struck me as fairly balanced for someone so deeply passionate about the topic. I also didn’t feel like he was ever saying those things to big himself up, but to draw attention to “the little guys” out there struggling despite their enormous talent. Yes, it’s a business and always has been and nobody is disputing that. But that doesn’t mean you should never take risks and it certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stand behind your team. Film is intrinsically a collaborative medium, from top to bottom. I think all Steven Soderbergh wants is for the studios to remember that.

Speaking as a long time fan of films ( and all genres from mega blockbusters to small intelligent talking head films that maybe only a few hundred people saw and enjoyed-and to those creators who dare to make those smaller films… the few hundred thousand of us out here appreciate the time and effort) I appreciate his bold statements. There IS room on the table for a variety of films. Perhaps one answer is for the studios to start marketing a portion of the smaller budget material toward the direct to video market since after all, more and more people are obviously waiting the three or four months it takes for a film to go to BluRay or streaming. Even with the hundreds of channels on cable there is STILL a huge amount of space in there for new films that people want to see and experience. Small budget, interesting stuff that would normally get lost in the spring and fall crush of theater material and thus, wind up being considered a failure because it didn’t bring in the anticipated profits. Start exploring the home markets. People are eager and waiting. Trust me.

The bottom line is that you guys ( the studios as well as casts and crews)are storytellers. Don’t forget that. Variety is the foundation of the business. And there IS an audience out there hungry for all types of stories- not just the whiz bang blockbusters. Keep making a variety of material for us. We’ll find it. And…thanks.

rob • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I wouldn’t say its with the support of the audience. A lot of people have stopped going to films. There are different reasons- price is way to much for the crap your getting ( Maybe there should be a pricing guide- Crap 44- well made $12) , product,lousy movie theaters .Also the actors are terrible, Most of them I have no idea who these people are , but I can tell you they can’t act.As true actors get older & pass away there is nobody to take their place. What a shame. When I was a teen I went twice a week. But now its hard to find anything good in a month. There is a lot of crap, most of which should just be on video.

Anonymous • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

rob,
what’s more likely? the movies were better, the actors were better and the theaters were better or you were younger, more naive, and more accepting of mediocrity?

Foetine • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

All this from the man who made Ocean’s 13 and likes to showboat about his retirement. Krzysztof Kieslowski was the last filmmaker to hype his retirement. How did that work out for him?

Comparing the studio of today with the movie studio of half a century is wrong. Movie studios don’t like making movies. They like other people to pay for them. Even better, they like other people to pay for them so they can rip off the actual producers and filmmaker with their nasty accounting.

Wasn’t Soderbergh part of Barry Diller’s USAFilms team of independent filmmakers who were going to work without the studio’s interference to deliver an artistic vision on the screen? How did that work out?

That Present Shock quote should be “When there’s no linear time…” (not tie).
And yes, I wrote it and would be happy for any and all of you to read it!

WB • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Wow, Douglas. Thanks for the Annie Hall moment!

skippy • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Nice. Cutting to the core, the film business has always been the balance of commerce and art with the pendulum swinging to extremes. Steven has had his feet in both camps and it shows. Today we are probably more on the “business” side than the “art” side, but the opportunity to do creative interesting cinema using new digital distribution is just beginning, and it is only a matter of time before a new generation of cineastes figures out a business model, which will probably not depend on either theatrical distribution or the $30mm required to “launch” a picture. This is not new, and his admonition that not enough of the suits really know anything about the history of film is spot on. Think of what happened in the late sixties when the 70mm studio extravaganzas gave way to emerging cinema makers like Brian DePalma, Martin Scorsese, Francis For Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. (how many of today’s execs have actually seen Box Car Bertha, THX1138, Duel, Your A Big Boy Now or Greetings). The same thing that happened with the emergence of French cinema in the mid fifties. Yes the zeitgeist has encouraged the wham slam thank you ma’am extravaganza, or the sophomoric comedy trying too hard; but the combination of low cost digital production and emerging distribution models creates a fertile ground for talented filmmakers to tell their story, and further refine their craft – both of which can lead to a healthier and more robust industry when the pendulum swings back.

Q • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Excellent breakdown of mitigating factors in the path of great ideas. He got everything right, except attention to multi-platform wild cards for inexpensively made ringers. That this man exists makes some of us not give up hope, with a capital H, the kind creative artists live by – so thank you to Steven Soderbergh, this makes it all count.

Mark • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

He makes some good points. But this is just a bitchfest. You either evolve with an industry or you don’t. Clearly, he isn’t. He needs to take some time off.

Thomas Earlham • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

“You either evolve with an industry or you don’t.”

This is passivist horse shit. Our choices and our rhetoric are part of the evolution, even when, perhaps especially when the resist the current trends of that evolution. Going with the flow is not the only option, and is almost never the right option for people with brains and passion.

Dan • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

Nothing changes really… this from Pauline Kael in 1980: Why are Movies so bad , the numbers:

Thank you Mr. Soderberg for updating this old argument about art vs commerce. Just keep being an artist, the world needs us more than ever.

Edward • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

It’s a nice speech and all but when you boil it all down isn’t it just the same thing that artists have been repeating since probably the time of Mesopotamia? I think I would be embarassed to be so cliched and so boring. Perhaps better and more refreshing to thank the guys (including the endlessly maligned studio executives) who take enormous financial risks in support of the visions of filmmakers. The contribution of financial risk takers to the creative process is so disregarded by artists as to be laughable. Artists seem to think losing $20m is no big deal. And why should they care? They get paid win lose or draw. When i read speech like this in which an artist slags off the risk takers while all the while taking their money risk free and becoming among the richest 1% of the world’s population, I feel that their famously self proclaimed mastery of irony has gone missing. Just saying……

Chris • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

No one thanks studio executives because they honestly don’t make decisions. Read up on things before you talk. They bring in analysts to determine how profitable a script is, which is based on how similar it is to a film that was alread made. They don’t read scripts; they watch movies and see how much it would cost for them to remake them. And there is no investment in artists’ visions. Don’t believe me? Look at Prometheus. The studios brought in a newer, but more popular, writer, and changed the script, regardless of what Ridley Scott wanted. Remakes, sequels, prequels, and reboots are not a risk. They play it safe, and they should be criticized for it.

taffin • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

I’m freaked, too, by the guy on the plane watching “only” the action sequences; the (generational?) disinterest in narrative these days is genuinely frightening to people, such as myself, who’ve been weaned on storytelling.

anon • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

don’t despair – that guy in the plane is a moron and probably has ADD – most people are attracted to a story like moths to a flame – it’s human nature.

reader • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

The guy on the plane – who knows if he is a stunt driver or what studying action sequences. Well, it inspired Soderbergh to write this piece anyway.

malibu • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

One of the biggest takeaways of this speech is the value of filmmaker. As an owner of one of the largest production companies out there for many years I have said continually always bet on the filmmaker, because no matter what is written on the page they will find a way to make it better than a filmmaker with no vision. This is the most important lesson I have learned in 20+ years. Clearly filmmakers need checks and balances, like making sure the material they want to do is commercial and meets the financial goals of the studios/financiers etc, but if studios understood that concept better the product would be better.

stephen • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

You are all, I think, missing a strategic point of this filmmakers argument. Go back to his opening remarks about the man on the airplane watching “4 hours of mayhem.” He is concerned about what film culture has become, how it has changed human behavior, and how does it bode for the future of all mankind. This is a very interesting and important topic that deserves further debate.

Claire's Knee • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

@Mark:

You meant to say “devolve” instead of “evolve”, didn’t you?

jcvd • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

This just kind of sums up Soderbergh, doesn’t it? Super smart, but a contradiction, spinning in circles. Really smart things in here– and a lot of talking in circles, second guessing, grand statements. This is art. Loved it.

icvd

I run this town • on Apr 30, 2013 3:10 am

great job deadline for putting this up. every filmmaker should read this.